Field
The present disclosure relates to an integrated circuit (IC) and an information processing device including the same, and more particularly relates to an accelerated aging test of an integrated circuit device and an information processing device including the same.
Description of the Related Art
Many integrated circuits, or ICs, experience degradation over time due to aging of the underlying transistors. Causes of this aging may include a repeated current consumption, leakage current production, heating of the device (due to high temperature), and/or physical degradation of parts due to passage of time.
Various aging effects cause continuous performance and reliability degradation during circuit run-time usage. Thus, in order to ensure the lifetime circuit reliability, an IC chip usually goes through what is called an accelerated aging test after fabrication and before commercial usage.
An accelerated aging test is a test that applies various aging conditions to an IC chip to observe the expected overall lifetime circuit performance and reliability, as well as vulnerability to the aging conditions. The aging conditions usually include a higher than normal operating voltage, a higher than normal loads, and/or a higher than normal operating temperature, etc.
It is also called an accelerated aging test which is run with more aggravated conditions to speed up the normal aging process of the IC chips and devices including the same. This accelerated aging test is beneficial because it helps determine the long term degradation effects of such aging conditions on IC chips and devices within relative a short time.
By performing such an accelerated aging test on an IC chip, it can be known whether any part of the chip produces too much leakage current, is incapable of dissipating power or current, or is heated up too much to cause overheat damages to adjacent parts, and/or is vulnerable to any of the aging conditions. Subsequently, only those IC chips that pass the test, which have shown certain level of performance under the tested aging conditions, can be marked ready for usage.
The aggravated conditions used in the accelerated aging test, such as a higher than normal operating voltage, however, often lead to an increased amount of leakage current on the tested IC chip, which can overheat the chip. Such an overheating of the chip may cause various malfunctioning damages to the chip and the tester device as well. Although the chip may recover from the overheat damages when it is allowed to cool, it is not always the case. Sometimes, the overheat damages may be permanent and not reversible. Furthermore, such overheat damages can be done not only to the overheated chip but also to the tester device as well.
Due to these overheat problems, an accelerated aging test has been limited to such an extent that the testing aging conditions are controlled so as not to cause the overheat problems in the tested chip and the tester device. Specifically, more alleviated aging conditions are chosen to prevent the overheat damages, and these conditions are often insufficient to simulate a proper aging of the tested IC chip to appropriately judge the chip's overall reliability and performance, including the vulnerability/resistibility to the long-term effects of the aging conditions. This often reduces the efficiency of the accelerated aging test.